


Present, Future, Past

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Series: s t i t c h [2]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: CW: mental illness, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-07-20 14:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16138835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: I can't fall asleep to your mysterySlowly blowing from the shoreI have not failed to be what you'd expect of meSwallowing glass just to stay pure-Matt Costa





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't fall asleep to your mystery  
> Slowly blowing from the shore  
> I have not failed to be what you'd expect of me  
> Swallowing glass just to stay pure
> 
> -Matt Costa

**X x XxX xXx X xX .** p r e s e n t **. Xx X xXx XxX x X**

Conrad Achenleck, dead this past week, has been hired as a Desk Clerk with the Municipal Registrar.

The Registrar could be found in the city's mall of Governing Offices, right there out in the open in a plaza sharing a civilian Courtroom, a Police Headquarters, a Federal Building of indeterminate use, and that smelly bare-carpeted place parolees with bail could elbow in with young idiots looking to get married on the cheap.  At night, the mall's courtyard blooms to a glowing second life - toppered streetlamps and tiered office windows and little bobbing squares of screen lights reflecting off doubled glass doorfronts; the new corners of opportunistic startups and the old cobbles of seasonal museums.  Conrad smells coffee and taco truck on exiting the cab, and can lift his chin a little higher that his vampirism hadn't banished him to that creepy third-shift isolation he'd once navigated back at Uni, and God Bless City Life.

The Registrar Office busies itself like a hive - brass trim, dark tile and the winks of small black technologies on the broad circles of the front desks, clerks in embroidered uniforms answering phones and sealing invoice folders for wire trays emptied by passing couriers in casual street clothes.  Among all the noise of this productivity, not a single heartbeat can be heard, not the tug of a single pulse can be felt, and the wind through the halls is chill in the way it could be chill in a building abandoned for a winter holiday - that the pipes might not freeze but you could feel that there was nobody home.

A shoulder-check interrupts Conrad's waving-down of a familiar desk clerk, and Casimiro's sharp sneer flashes by, half a grin.

Conrad watches warily as Casimiro exits the revolving doors, doubly startled to turn back to his errand and bump nose-first into Finas' solid bulk.  Conrad snaps up from his slouch and wobbles a step in retreat, shoving his glasses back up his face. 

Finas raises his eyes and crosses his arms and tilts his chin, a grim unspoken prompt.

"N-" Conrad starts, chokes a bit, restarts in a sputter - "Nothing for you, thanks, about Adelaide."  He curls his fists, dipping his chin.  "Fuck off."

Finas blinks, sways a centimeter to make room for a passing courier.

Conrad swallows, darts a glance to either side.  "It was  _wrong_ of you two to threaten us, and you know it."

A terse smirk lands just under Finas' eyes, settling across his cheekbones as a brick laid upon a wall, disturbing no other part of his face.  "You have been murdered, without pause or question or regret.  We know that Adelaide has done this, and we know Mr. Cross is culpable for Adelaide's release.  There will be a trial," shifting his weight again, Finas scans the wide marbled foyer and its crowd, then notices Conrad as if anew.  "For the death.  For the  _responsibility_ of that death."  And Finas reaches forward, and it is not far to reach, and his hand is a heavy cusp around Conrad's shoulder, a vice through the thick faux-leather of Conrad's white jacket.  "Adelaide, for the murder.  Or Cross, for the complicity."

"I'm not pressing charges," Conrad valiantly argues, though it dips nearer a whisper.

Finas steps  _close_ , anchoring Conrad in place with his grip.  "Then you, or yours, will answer to someone else entirely, my friend.  Soon, perhaps."  His hand squeezes, bracing.  "Prepare yourself.  Prepare your people.  Adelaide cares not what Houses crumble in the path of her storm."

Conrad swallows against the hot lead lump in the back of his throat, but his fists only clench the harder.  "Noted," he assures, jaw firming.

An argument is lost in Finas' stare, and he shrugs, patting Conrad's shoulder with a consolatory chuff.  Finas steps away, and Finas fishes a pair of driving gloves from his woolen overcoat, and Finas leaves.

"No Country For Old Men, looking, poor man's Javier Bardem son of a _bitch_ ," Conrad mutters darkly to himself as he hitches his shoulders up around his ears and stomps forward, fisting his wallet out of his jacket to rip a paper receipt out, reading its address out loud to the first secretary to catch his eye - who then points him to the elevators.

"Er," Conrad debates, on having reached the floor to which the scribbled address belongs - he was not yet so familiar with the building to know which rooms belonged to what, but  _this_ room was clearly one of heightened importance, considering the thick burnished wood of its double doors, and the security detail posted at either end of the ornate hallway.  Conrad cracks one of the doors open to a merry 'come on in' from the woman at the receiving desk, then to be directed to the open-walled waiting room, opposite from  _another_ set of dark cherrywood double-doors lacking handles in the stead of a brushed-chrome keypad.

Conrad whistles low, and claims a place in the nearest stuffed leather loveseat, purveying the bookshelves inset the walls, magazines beside thick tomes of modern titles, the room extravagantly cozy - that it lacks a teakettle over a roaring fire is its only departure from rote old-money posh; but of course vampiric offices never would host open flame.  Conrad folds his hands in his lap and slumps, a little irritated that he'd not been properly warned about this summons, that he wasn't better dressed or hadn't prepared any information should this be some sort of interrogation. 

The desk clerk laughs from her station, and waves a courier through the way you'd come.  "Thanks, Nate, I'll owe you."  She stands, gathering a purse over her shoulder.  To Conrad, "Nathan here is going to sort your appointment, doll." To Nathan,  "I'll be back in an hour, so text me if he doesn't show in thirty.  Maybe I'll be able to suss him out, get him in tonight, yeah?"

"Yeah," Nathan agrees, a dark, square-jawed man in runners, baggy track pants and sleeveless jogger's hood, the t-shirt underneath stretched a bit thin over his biceps.  He smiles at the secretary for whom he was volunteering to cover, and this is a brilliant smile, warm but not over-exposed, eyes a deep purple glitter under a heavy brow.  "Do you have the file?" 

"Conference, I think," and the secretary (whose desk-plate reads "Janet, Damnit", hopefully as an inter-office joke) takes her sweeping leave from the receiving desk, its foyer, and the open waiting room with its lone guest.

"Name?" Nathan prompts cheerfully enough, rubbing a wide hand over his scalp to scuff at his closely shorn crop of black hair.

"Er," Conrad perches forward, hands on knees.  "Achenleck, Conrad?"

"... 'Wound-taste warrior'?" Nathan asks from over a pile of folders atop the desk.  "That's... that's not an alias, right?  That's your birth name?"

Conrad gnaws on his confusion, nodding once that quirked eyebrow is aimed his way.

"Hup!" Nathan shrugs, chuckling.  "Okay, you're not in here, so we're gonna hafta wait for the Big Bad to get back from lunch, as it's _his_ stuff in the conference room and we don't move the Judicant's stuff."  He wags his hand and cracks his knuckles and rubs the bridge of his stately, hooked nose.  "You really need those glasses?"

"Uh."  Conrad leans back, tries to get comfortable, crosses his arms.  "Why wouldn't I?"

Nathan's smile is slow this time, fangs evident, and he studies Conrad head to toe, then kicks the desk chair out to take a heavy sit, wheeling half into the waiting room.  "You're - ah, oh crap, what was it again?  Watery, or thin, thinblooded?"  He tucks his arms behind his head, scuffing at his scalp again.  "And you still look dead, mate.  Not flash."

Biting the inside of his cheek, Conrad turns in his seat to regard the windowed wall, the rain gathering in small silenced gashes of light against the backdrop of the taupe city night.  "I'm a vegetarian."

"Get out," Nathan challenges with a jerk of his chin.  "Right now.  Get the fuck out of this office," chuckling, Nathan rocks back onto his feet to spin the seat backward, straddling it to rest his forearms along its back with all the squeak of hinge and spring that entails.  "You aren't."

Relenting, Conrad shakes his head no.  "But I don't bite, you know.  People.  I know that's supposed to help, but, I like my glasses more than I like a mouthful of human being.  Thanks."

Nathan frowns, nodding.  "They suit you."  After a pregnant pause, "And, hey, that's not so unusual these days, going 'vegan'.  Modern avenues of medicine, 'n that.  Less liable to get collared for a murder, less heat from our dear city's various agencies of persecution, oll korrect."

Conrad jerks a shoulder, watching Nathan-the-desk-jockey with dawning annoyance.  "I don't think I need to _care_ what's usual or acceptable to the crowd in this building.  I've _been_  assigned to the _basement_."

Nathan crumples forward, mock-devastation.  "Clutch my fucking pearls, Achenleck, now you're interesting.  Do you work desk, or floor?"

A curl flickers over Conrad's nose, repressed judgement.  "Desk."

"How's it?"

Conrad flashes a reluctant glare.  "In a word, it's _gross_.  I filled out the aptitude survey and they all but threw me down there.  '''High impulse control', indeed."

Nathan leans back with one hand gripping the chair top to brace him, open thumb and forefinger leveled Conrad's way, but his accusation is more of a question than anything, "You didn't... want to be a vampire."

Conrad's mouth works in a hidden chew. "I didn't want to _be_ anything but an artist," he confesses quietly.  "I just - I wanted to graduate design and be a designer and build a portfolio good enough to get me around the world.  And then I died.  And now I'm here."  He sighs, meeting Nathan's open study with all due defense, "And now I'm here, feeling like a  _snob_ and a criminal and an idiot, talking to a -" his hand flaps out, paper bird from a white sleeve, "I don't know, what are you, a mailman?  Sandwich guy?  Do you load a truck full of people and hock nibbles off them at midnight?  What's your compliance in this more literal hellscape of the corporate west?"

Nathan is nodding, smiling rueful, and answers with a chuff of amusement, "I run 'coffee', yeah.  Unpaid intern, here for the social connections on the way to a real job."

"What," Conrad husks, "Is 'coffee' supposed to mean."

But Nathan just shakes his head slow and happy-sorry.  "Nah, you couldn't afford it."

"I couldn't afford to  _know_ what it is?"

"That's right," Nathan stands in a sway, stretches with several pops of joint and spine.  "Ooph.  You're an unhappy one."

Conrad only jerks his chin, eyes wide with the effort to contain his exasperation.

Nathan, "I'll tell you what 'coffee' means, if you smile."

Affront twists Conrad's entire self, from eyebrows to nose to flashed fang to hitched shoulders to hips shoved into the seat from a leg crossing so violently over the other it actually scuffs a low table out of place.  His  _hair_  is offended.  His  _fingernails_ feel scandalised.  "I'm gonna beg every  _fucking_ pardon that you repeat that, because I'm not sure I heard you _oll korrect_ the first time."

"Not smiled since I've been here," Nathan bends to return the desk chair to its spot, still all scoffs and chortles.  "Starting to feel kinda personal."

"It's not," Conrad cracks, jacket sleeves squeaking under his hands.  "I wasn't in the best shape when I was alive, and now I'm not even medicated against that.  It's  _nothing_ personal, I just have  _issues_ with... people.  Myself.  Oversharing.  I don't know.  It's not your problem."  The loveseat beside Conrad dips with Nathan's weight and Conrad flinches, averting his eyes.

Nathan leans his elbows on his knees to flip through an auto catalogue, having sat close enough to tilt Conrad his way.  "It _is_ my problem," he explains slowly, as if searching the magazine for his lines.  "It's not  _mine_ , I mean, but it can affect all of us, this whole community.  Self-loathing opens avenues of extremism, as seen in marginalized groups across the globe."  Nathan sighs through his nose, a narration.  "And though it might not look it, for this building, in this city?  We are one seriously marginalized population, us.  That's enough trouble from people on the outside, that we don't need more wars from people on the inside."

Conrad's argument is just as slow, and careful.  "I don't... hate.  Vampires.  I don't hate mysel-"  his teeth click shut.  "I don't think I've smiled in days.  Weeks, probably.  And now I've been summoned to some, what, judicial purvey and I don't have any optimism as to what this -" his arms wave out, encompassing - "Could even entail."  When Nathan doesn't answer, "So, no.  I can't just put on the old water-cooler smallchat and make friendly with a coworker right now.  Doesn't mean I'm one skinny pamphlet away from self-immolation or recreational kamikaze or whatever."

Peeling open a center-fold of a corvette, "Would you smile for a Klondike Bar?"

"I hate you," Conrad concludes lightly, chin dipping in a distant nod to agree with an invisible audience.

"Snausage?"  
  
"I don't even know you, and I hate you."

"Would you smile for a particularly colorful bowl of cereal, the brand whose name escapes me?"

"Not vampires, not couriers, not even myself, just you."

"Cartoon rabbit, always thieving it away from children?"  Nathan glances up from his magazine with earnest curiosity and can't bite back his laughter at Conrad's expression.  "Just, mate," he sits back, sinking into the seat, boneless, magazine left over a wagging knee.  "You're making  _me_ smile." Nathan pauses, as if he'd tripped over what those words really mean, then taps the side of Conrad's elbow.  "Doesn't seem fair, you all miserable."  Inspired, Nathan stands, tossing the magazine at Conrad's lap.  "Let's lighten that burden, yeah?  You gotta know why you're here?"

The argument lodges itself in Conrad's throat as he folds the magazine shut to set it neatly aside.

Nathan beckons from the foyer, tapping a code into the conference room doors.  "Fingers crossed he ain't in here naked," he ribs, doors decompressing their seal to ease open.

Conrad hangs back to peer into the dimly lit conference room, its long glass-top table hosting several executive-class swivel chairs around it, a desk rising up on a platform beyond the head of the table, project screen to one side, charts and file cabinets and other working detritus to the other.  A name plate glints from the desk, half obscured by a succulent, '-aniel Montag'.

"Wound-taste, Warrior," Nathan announces, snapping a green cabinet folder into the air.

Conrad retreats from the door to make room for Nathan's passing back into the reception room, expression pinched in concern.  "Should we be doing this?"

"Oh now we're a 'we'?" Nathan winks, gingerly perching atop the reception desk to browse the thin collection of papers in Conrad's file.  "Timestamp says it just got up here tonight.  If we trashed it he'd never know you were even due."  He shrugs.  "Nothing in here flags your visit as particularly pressing."  He browses a few more pages, then,  "Hey, uh, Conrad?"

Conrad pulls back from his tentative attempt to read over Nathan's shoulder, mouth bitten shut and eyebrows up to feign disinterest.  "Mm?"

"Do you know a woman goes by the name Adelaide?"

"I don't, actually," Conrad answers easily.  "I know there was a bat in my apartment, I know it turned into a woman who went by the name of Adelaide, and I know that woman killed me on the roof of my apartment building; I traded a few words with her later, after a dispute with someone whom I was later informed was a Caliphate Hunter, but I never knew Adelaide, and haven't seen her since that night."

"Well," Nathan searches Conrad's face, then shrugs with his mouth.  "Sounds legitimate.  Guess it wouldn't matter even if you were lying."

"How so?"

Nathan leaves the desk to wander toward a window further in the waiting room, file in hand.  "Because Adelaide's dead.  Caliphate confirmed a contract kill, and her Patron felt their ties sever just yesterday.  Wonder that Judicants city-wide are all taking long lunches, tonight."

Conrad squints, stomach tight.  "Was she that well known?"

"Adelaide of 1845?  Fairly notorious, yeah."  Nathan reaches down behind a low shelf to tug a release latch, cool night rain wafting in on fresh air.  The file is blithely slipped through the window, to perish in the street puddles five stories below.  "There.  Oll korrect."

"Wuh-" Conrad protests, staggering a few steps forward.  "Is - is that it?  Is it, though?  Was that okay?"  He casts a frantic dithering glance from window to courier to hallway double-doors and back.

"No offense, Connie, but Judicant Monday has  _much_ bigger fish to fry, and he'd be downright annoyed that you even took up the space in his file cabinet, much less took up the time to formally dismiss your case."

"So," Conrad exhales long and slow, relief soaking down his shoulders and into the sore hollow of his back.  "So what now?  I don't have to deal with the shitshow of inheritance law now, do I?  No bat-siblings in the rafters ready to sue me over old drapes?  Does her shit just get forfeited to whatever government of whatever countries she terrorized, or do I need to hire a lawyer?"

Nathan squeaks the window shut and dusts his hands together, tilting his head.  "Wealth inherits  _up_ , to the Patron or Matron who made you.  Cuts way back on civil warring, that law."

Conrad sighs again, loud this time, and actually has to kneel to the floor in relief.

"Hey," Nathan joins Conrad in the kneel, helping him tug off the faux-leather jacket, as vampires didn't need oxygen but Conrad certainly needed  _air_.  "I thought you didn't know her."

"I don't.  I didn't." Conrad sits back with a scuff of boot heels on cold marble, rubbing his face.  His hands drift out, forward, arms stretching to meet the rise of his knees, burying sight, sound into the curl, trying to catch a breath that his lungs don't even need.

"You're a grown man on the floor.  I think that merits some explanation."

Conrad peers up from the nest of his arms.  "What does that matter, right now?  Who's here to see it?"

"Well," Nathan deliberates, "The Judicant, for starts."  
  
Conrad flinches, startled search cast toward the hall doors that remained shut, then at the conference room still empty and dark.  A reprimand half out of his snarl, Conrad stiffens, stopped.  Every planet continues its dance around every star in the galaxy, except for that one cold, vicious revelation freezing the whole of the earth in place.

Nathan watches evenly from his kneel, sympathy a degree more somber than past effects, the heavy weight of authority settled in his calm.

"There was some trouble with people trying to find Adelaide," Conrad explains crisply, though his vision has tunneled from the stress of the moment.  The world resumes its spin, rain gathering down the window, gold lamplight streaks on a taupe city night.  Shakily, "Trouble with which I no longer have to deal.  Excuse me."  Blindly, Conrad pulls himself to a stand, bends to retrieve his jacket.

"No need to get so formal on me, mate," The conference room doors slam shut, and Conrad is knocked, invisibly, back onto his ass.  Nathan - 'Nathaniel Montag' across the conference desk plaque - folds both arms over his propped knee, watching Conrad indulgently.  "Which people were trying to find her?  Did the Caliph deign a civil discourse?"

 _"Your_ people," Conrad accuses hotly, balling the jacket up against his stomach.  "Who only introduced themselves as Casimiro and Finas.  I guess they've yet to get the news of Adelaide's demise," he gripes, "because they've yet to leave me the hell alone."

Nathaniel inhales, focusing on the ceiling, then back at Conrad, tapping his knee.  "What else."

"Nothing else."  Conrad's shoulders reach his ears, sinking back.  "What, are you going to _torture_ me now?  I didn't have anything to do with Adelaide's death, either, if that's what you're asking.  I only just recently know what a Caliph even  _is_ , and I know they wouldn't take a contract from me."

"God, but you are so  _unhappy,_ " Nathaniel laments, pushing himself to a stand.  He offers a hand down in assistance, which is merely ogled, then yanks Conrad up by the arm instead.  "It's offensive, how nervous you are right now.  You know that, right?"

"Um," Conrad grunts, tugging away.  "Okay?  So?"

"So holy _hell_ , man, cheer up!  I just got all the information I needed out of you, and we had  _fun_ doing it."  Nathaniel chops his hands through the air, weighing events.  "I toss your file, you  _wilt_ because that might get you in trouble.  I let you know, hey, bigman himself here, it's fine, and you jump up like a slapped fish.  You want to know what 'coffee' stands for?"

Conrad's alarm only rivals his confusion.  "... Justice?"

Nathaniel drops his chin to hide his wheezing grin.  "No, mate.  There's no such thing as a coffee-jockey in this building, you pretty much have to feed yourself.  But you  _thought_ it meant something downright horrible, because you're an anxious mess of a contender."  He levels at Conrad again, fingers to temple and hand outstretched.  "'These are not the droids you are looking for', yeah, that's my qualification for this gig.  So when I say you're unhappy, that's not an assumption.  Your head is  _fucked,_ bruv."

Conrad searches the room for help, chest heaving.  "And what am I supposed to do about that?"

"Do!"  Nathaniel exclaims, laughing.  "Fuck's sake, man, don't you try and  _do_ anything, about that or otherwise.  Keep your head down, maybe  _do_ your job, stay out of the affairs of the ambitious.  If Leon calls - and he will call - pretend you're dead.  Pretend you're less than dead, pretend you never existed."

"Who," Conrad quavers, and can't finish.

"Inheritance falls up," Nathaniel reminds.  "You're Leon's problematic, now.  You're thin-blooded, honest, terrified; problematic."

Conrad shrivels around the wad of his jacket, and cringes toward the hall doors.  "Thanks for the information, I guess.  Really, it's been... informative.  I'm going to  _go_ , now, unless you want to cat-and-mouse this conversation all night."

"By all means," Nathaniel sweeps an arm out toward the doors, which bluster open.  "And take that rain cloud with you, Mopey Dick."  At Conrad's back, "You're  _welcome_."

"And you're  _insane_ ," Conrad snipes over his shoulder, to the applause of deeply unburdened laughter.

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**

Cast adrift in the idea that he is absolutely, totally, completely alone in this new vampiric debacle, Conrad's panic breaks open in the rainy street, wits left behind in a sidewalk puddle.  There were  _people_ after him - what was warned by Finas, other enemies of Adelaide's, perhaps; and what was warned by Nathaniel,  _an ally_  of Adelaide's, and not a single vampire on his side, or in his House, or whatever.  The Registrar didn't stick the popular clerks on basement duty, that was for goddamn sure.

"You can't smoke that here," the grocery's cashier drones, and Conrad stubs his cigarette out on the cabbage she'd just stuffed in the canvas tote, hardly able to recall when he'd lit up, or when he'd even entered the store, much less gathered the week's groceries. "Basic," the cashier mutters. It was Wednesday, Conrad wanted to scream. Wednesday was for grocery shopping and routine was good for his _mental health_.

Halfway up the bus stairs Conrad remembers he had no use for groceries, himself, and his composure breaks open again on the cold seat, screaming silently into a canvas tote with a carrot stabbing a dimple into his cheek.

When it is Doc Worth glaring suspiciously from Hanna's lopsided apartment doorway, all the open wounds in Conrad's psyche dutifully gather themselves back up and stack to some semblance of stability, a leaning tower of raw hamburger instead of a working brain.  He blinks, returned to earth, and scowls around at the hallway to check that he'd not dissociated so hard as to end up at the clinic.

"Wot?" Worth prompts impatiently as if he were expecting someone or something else, supremely disappointed to find Conrad there on the dingy little welcome mat instead.

"Er." A stuffed bag in each arm, celery frond poking him in the chin, Conrad pushes past into the apartment and mumbles a greeting to the dead man, who stands wordlessly to clear table space. "Is Hanna in?" The futon in the far corner lays rumpled and empty, but still the question begs asking.

"Hanna is not here." Justin/Kai/Alexander intones, but if there is frustration or worry in those spare words, Conrad can't hear it.

Worth, however, remains expressive. "Red's taken hisself on a little outing, sounds like. Here."

Conrad lets the thrown bloodbag bounce gormlessly off his chest, quite incapable of higher motor function just then.

"I'll leave y'folks to yer supper." Worth casts a yellowed glare toward the grocery bags, for which Conrad has the sudden inexplicable urge to step in front of and hide from scrutiny.  Worth turns a bony shoulder up as if to block a cigarette from the wind, and shuts the door after himself.

"Saunderson and Sons, LLC." The dead man says, appropos of nothing. "A warehouse. We are not to follow." He shifts his step from counter to fridge to cupboard, and come to think on it, the apartment has grown steadily tidier since Gregory/Nnando/Casey had taken up residence. There are hardly any roaches.

"Er," Conrad bites down on a frown, bending to retrieve Worth's parting gift, completely gutted of appetite. "What?"

"Hanna is on a case. There have been murders, injuries.  Arrows and crossbow bolts, fired from invisible hands.  We are not to follow, but that is the last known lead.  Down Wallabash Street, near the wayside.  Saunderson and Sons, LLC."

Conrad sniffs, worrying at a corner of the plastic bag with a seeking fang. "So?" He bites, and drinks deep because it is nourishment and he needs it, and pauses to fight a thick rise of nausea, and finds the zombie watching him with an unblinking scrutiny.

"So, Hanna left to follow that lead. Four days ago."

Conrad frowns up at Domino/Kirk/Hector, wiping his chin of no visible spill. "Did he say why he had to go alone?"

"Yes." If there is impatience in Zoolander/Ezekiel/Barton's stance, then Conrad can't see it. "I promised Hanna that I would not follow. I did not, however, promise against sending others to his aid."

"Four days..." Conrad mutters, sagging against a countertop. "Who are you going to send?" The next question was going to be 'and what was this danger, exactly', but the zombie's glance to the door tells Conrad all he needed to know.

"If Hanna is injured, a doctor would be the better candidate."

Conrad stifles a belch, regarding the bloodbag as if to check for ingredients. "So what's so dangerous that Hanna swore you into letting him go it alone?" Not that he is fishing for information in preparation to go himself, but... But he is doing exactly that, and suspects the zombie is playing along just so they could creatively edit the confession once Hanna was recovered and got all indignant over broken orders.

"The victims only shared a few common denominators. Adults, twenties to middle aged. Divorced or widowed or otherwise single. What would shoot arrows at people like that?"

Conrad drops the half-heavy bloodbag into the open maw of a wire waste bin. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Only a theory, but, there was an apprehension, if either one of us were hit, there might be uncomfortable consequence."

"Ugh!" Conrad drives curled fingers through his hair. "And you sent _Worth_? How is that any better than simply going yourself?"

The zombie smiles faintly.  "Because Worth has made no promise to stay behind.  But in all seriousness, Mr. Achenleck, people have died. For whatever reason, this minion of Eros uses solid corporeal arrows." Remus/Tobias/Yeltzen approaches Conrad, as close to imploring as he seemed capable. "And it aims for the heart."

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**

It is the first time that year Conrad has voluntarily touched someone, in a way that wasn't a violent attempt on their life (Adelaide) or an equally violent attempt on their vulgar assumptions (Worth). The fact of the matter is that Conrad prefers not to touch _anyone,_ at all, ever, and struggles with his revulsion in the face of the horror filling that night.

First off, 'cupids', or cherubs, are not the rosy-cheeked winged infants of the Renaissance. They are many-headed, and large, and all wrong; a mashup of animal parts and too many wings and three pairs of skinny dark arms with long flashing fingernails on hands with which they could play harps and fire cupid bows, apparently.  Cherub isn't even the right word; this thing is some long-forgotten slice of ancient empowered lore that had been warped by the march of monotheism across the metaphysical imaginations of the people. Or something.

Hanna isn't exactly clear in his babbling lecture. He twists in Conrad's grasp, a sweaty days-starved shell that wants nothing more than to go to that giant thing wailing and flapping in the far corner of the docking warehouse. "You can't!" he sobs, writhing in Conrad's reluctant grip.

The arrows fly. Worth fires the shotgun.

Hanna collapses, grief-stricken, and Conrad drops him indelicately to the gritty cement floor. Kicking aside the sharpie marker, Conrad shuffles in a circle to survey the damage, blood thick and sweet in the air.  Hanna had taken a bolt in the thigh days earlier; the wound had been bandaged with a plaid shirtsleeve the duration of his stay with the Cherub (with which he had, apparently, fallen in love).  It is with a twinge that Conrad registers his own wound, ribs pierced through from behind, missing his heart by the grace of luck.

Worth had staggered up by then, and unceremoniously yanks the shaft free of Conrad's dead torso with a warning curse.

Conrad winces, but it doesn't hurt nearly as badly as he'd prepared for. The next few heartbeats tilt through the room and pull the smells down then up, and Conrad feels dizzy and woozy and suddenly fine, but it all still feels very... odd. Meeting Doc Worth's venomous gaze for a split second, there is no lightning strike of sudden and overwhelming infatuation, but reality orients itself back from the two steps to the left it had been skewed.  Conrad feels a little badly for Cross sobbing dejectedly on the floor there, but that was as far as _feelings_ went for the night. He hopes.

"Kid, it killed people," Worth argues softly, helping Hanna to a shaky stand. "Yer gonna feel like shit about it for a little while, and then yer gonna remember this was all mumfuckery. Hey?"

Conrad shifts in place, discomfited by the consolation and haunted by the lingering warmth against the inside of his arms where bony ribs had heaved. "Oh, son of a -" Conrad blurts, staring down at his own arms in sudden dawning alarm. Shit shit _shit_ , he was in fake magic love with Hanna. He wanted to 'go to' him and maybe do that hugging grapple thing until Hanna stopped crying.

Worth's sharp demand 'wot' interrupts Hanna's babbled arguments. Conrad relents the stage to his own wordless horror and Hanna plows on; "It just lost its quiver so it got new kindsa arrows and it doesn't know what death even _is_ and she - it -" A hiccough. A far-away gaze. "Man. She was so cool."

"She was gonna kill us, Red." Doc Worth lights a cigarette with shaking hands.

"No. No, man. She was... she wanted to _understand_. She was a weaver of threads across entire universes, and she only wanted people to be happy." Hanna slumps, exhaustion catching up with his overwrought corpus. "Why did you have to kill her?" He looks about to cry again, staring up at Worth like maybe there would be a fight. But Worth isn't smug enough, or antagonistic enough just then, and Conrad can't help but hear Nathaniel's lament about happiness, and his total void thereof.

Conrad interrupts the weighty moment with forced impatience. "Hanna, I think you really need to -" he pulls in a sharp breath at the register of the smell, that Worth is also bleeding and that means he wasn't the only one who'd gotten hit and fuck, fuck everything, fuck this place, fuck this _night_ -

Dissociation stills Conrad's overwrought panic, gaze distant, silent and ashen.

Worth steps back from his forward-march to leave Hanna to his hurt muttering, brows pinched up in expressive concern, "Y' all right there yerself, Connie?"

Conrad's autopilot manages its own brand of bald honesty, a levied mutter. "No, thanks. Actually I'm in quite a lot of trouble, right now, and I don't think anybody can help me and I don't even think there's anybody who wants to." He swallows, tasting the bagged blood returned from its cold sink in his gut. "I think I'm going to die, again, for real this time."

"Aw princess, yer hardly gonna bleed out -"

Conrad laughs, bitter, shaking. "That isn't what I'm talking about." He pushes past Worth to hesitate at Hanna's side, shoving his arms in like awkward oars, gathering their stagger one against the other to navigate the warehouse floor to the exit.  At the door, Conrad grits his teeth and lets his temple sink against Hanna's, their glasses colliding. "You can fix it," he entreats, deaf to anything but the hiccoughing rasp of Hanna's labored breath. "Tell me you can fix everything. I know you can, Cross, _please_ ," and he says 'Hanna' as if it were a girl's name, a girl who is breaking his heart and he was only begging her not to leave his dysfunctional finicky OCD jerk-ass. "I don't have anybody else to ask."

Hanna blinks, slowly. "Excuse me," he shrugs away from the lean, staggers, mopping tear stains to smear dirt over his nose, chin. "You didn't let me explain, you both just -"  he splutters, gesturing frantically back at the dissolving corpse of the slain metaphysical miracle, reliving, "Worth brought a _gun_ and you didn't even -" Hanna steps back, raking a hard appraisal over Conrad head-to-toe, and Conrad has never before felt so wretched. "Maybe we give it some time before we go asking me any favors about fixing whatever-the-fuck." Hanna turns away and strides toward Lamont's car with more strength than someone trapped in isolation for half a week would otherwise have.

Worth snorts around his cigarette, clearly impressed.

Conrad edges away from the doorway and out into the lot, numb. "Don't even fucking pretend this isn't your fault."

"Feh. He'll live."

"What, you aren't - aren't you -" Conrad lets a weak arm sway from Worth's bleeding coat-sleeve to the lone car in the wide, brightly lit parking lot. "In fake magic love with Cross?"

Blowing smoke right over Conrad's shoulder, Worth leans in close. His bloodshot, sunken eyes trace a slow and deliberate path up Conrad's face until they meet the dawning of Conrad's incredulity. "Nope."

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**

The next night Conrad marches into Worth's clinic with a very curt "Justherefortheblood,thanks." He damn well can't meet the man's eyes, but has to spare a greeting to that week's urchin-apprentice or otherwise raise suspicion - which was ridiculous because _nothing was wrong, thanks_.

"Hanna left yer somefin'," Worth grumbles over the top of his newspaper while the 'medical intern' under his employ grabs a fresh face mask from its designated cabinet and disappears back into the surgery proper. The mini-fridge behind Worth's desk had been decorated with a sugar-skull magnet, pinning up a note.

_Conman,_

_Sorry about the warehouse, I wasn't in the best place kind of figuratively and for realsies._

_What did you need help with, exactly? Were you talking about the cupid's arrow, because I doubt those actually had the same power as the originals - but then, I don't know, they probably do, because I like monsters but I wouldn't say I *love* them, you know? Maybe we get this problem reviewed, either way. There's probably a cure - I'm already looking (it's not whiskey, in spite of popular logic, LOL). But if you're talking about a different problem, then yeah, get back to me ASAP._

_I know I'm not the only one who can help. I know there's at least Angus/Jake/Grindelwauld here, too, and that you should know you aren't alone even if I'm busy or mad at you or whatever._

_Sorry I'm always such a fuckup,  
_ _H. F. Cross_

Conrad slumps against the filing cabinet, his dead shriveled heart clenching with ghost pains, stomach clenching with apprehension that Worth had access to such confession second-hand. It was dumb, what he'd asked of Hanna, and when he'd asked it, and with what frame of mind. Adelaide was dead, nobody was after him, and Nathaniel was the type of mind-gaming twat to be expected in a literal den of vampires.

"You gonna decorate my office all night, Connie?" Worth chuckles, slapping at Conrad's hip with the sports section. "Not that I'm complainin'."

"Ew," Conrad drawls, folding Hanna's note over between his fingers to spare Doc Worth some attention, before the antagony could _escalate_.  "Where's the coat?"

"Drycleaners." Tight bandages wrap Worth's arms, from bony wrists up to the sleeves of his Harley Davidson t-shirt, and to this detail Conrad nods.

"Hiding the track marks, I see."

Worth's eyes crease in a lazy smile, challenge accepted, and he wags his rolling chair in place, slumping back with the newspaper folded over his long thigh. "Vampire hickeys. I'm a popular bloke."

"He does it to himself," the intern says, returned to peel a beverage cooler from the sticky floor. "Gets off to it, just so you know."

Conrad blanches, accusatory in his step back. _"Jesus,_ you actually tell people that?"

Worth's eyebrows rise, blithely offended. "'Tell'?" The implication sinks down into his grinning reprimand. "Connie. Think better on a fella, would you."

"God," Conrad relents, hands up, defeated. "I'm leaving."

"Don't forgetcher dinner," Worth kicks his chair to a roll to the mini-fridge, prising a bloodbag free to meet Conrad over the cluttered landscape of his desk. Leaning an elbow on the table, Worth pulls the bag away from Conrad's loose reach, silently expectant.

Conrad stalls, still a little sorely reminded of Nathaniel and all his shitty teasing. "So help me six-pound four-ounce _tiny baby Jesus_ , if you ask me to smile I will put you through that desk."

Worth blinks as if he'd just been wished a happy birthday, and croaks, "Is that a fuckin' promise?"

Conrad reaches forward again, tentatively this time. "What?"

"What?" Worth echoes, grinning, sly, and hands the bag over. "Bit slow tonight, Con, you sure you're all right?"

"I'm never 'all right'," Conrad mutters, but toasts the bag up in thanks. "Cheers."

"Oi," Worth interrupts the departure, pushing himself to a stand, but the door is already swinging shut, a drunk bruiser of old metal in a weather-softened frame, its dull thump like the body getting dropped in the surgery.

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**

  
"You aren't a fuckup," Conrad blurts from Hanna's open door, snapping the note up into view. "And nevermind about the help, the problem was settled before I even asked you about it." He drifts after Hanna, whose mouth is too full of pizza to retaliate, and closes the door with his heel.  "But Worth was pretty friendly tonight, so, yes, I _do_ think we should go on ahead with finding some sort of remedial to our, er, situation.  You cut your hair."

Hanna has, indeed, cut his hair very close to the scalp, the second reminder of the evening to hearken back to Nathaniel, and his ears stick out from his head in an absurd representation of a very young person - or a very old one. "'Rsh shome good newsh," Hanna mumbles, then swallows. "And there's some bad news." He wipes a cheek with a napkin, mistakenly offers a slice forward, and sits to the patchwork armchair with a guileless laugh when refused. "Guest's honor, what do you want to get out of the way first?"

Conrad steels himself, accepting an open seat on the futon, brushing at invisible crumbs. "Bad news, I suppose."

"Right." The smile falls off that freckled face and Hanna actually looks every year of his twenty-four, regardless of how his ears poke out like a taxi driving down the street with its doors open. T he sobriety with which he delivers the next news solidifies the impression. "People are dying, again. It's kinda up to us to stop it, again. We kinda might need a four-man-or-woman team on this one, and I can't get a hold of Toni, again. So we're going stag, _again_."

"'Us' and 'we'?"

"Well, you were -" Hanna looks pained, but forges on with a glance from Flobottomus/Mononoke/Brenda. "You were a big help, last night. If you don't have anything better to do, I could use some of that invulnerability of yours, you know, sometimes.  When you want."

The zombie clears his throat, clapping his romance novel shut.

Hanna sighs, rolling his eyes. "Okaaay, so I _need_ help, and I'm asking you for help, and that's normal and fine and _not_ at all lame or whiny or self-centered, and you have every agency to say no, and...?  Oh, and I should let you help because otherwise I'm not respecting your autonomy of choice -"

"That's fine," Conrad agrees on the heels of Hanna's idealistic dissection.  "Yes. Sure."  He waves at the air as if dismissing a fly, impatient to silence the painfully obvious cross-reference to his own difficulty asking for help. "Whatever. That's not even on the radar of things that are ever even going to be a problem for me, Hanna, I'd really rather not see you imperiled by a lack of field support."

"Rrright," Hanna drawls, suspicious now over the curve of his fingers. "Which brings me to the other bad news, since you miiight be helping me out of a, sort of, sense?  Of affection?"

"As opposed to the morbid curiosity and crippling ignorance that's fueled me thus far, sure."

Hanna nods, enlightened despite Conrad's sarcasm, "So we know the stand-in cupid's arrows were just as potent as the originals."

"That's what you said," Conrad waves the note, fidgeting it open and shut, like folding a band-aid back over a cut. "And the good news is that you have a cure, right?"

"Eh, well," Tilting his open hand side to side Hanna grabs up another slice of pizza, then accepts a can of soda from the passing zombie. "Not really that, no, not exactly." The discourse pauses for another bite, chew, swallow, a long swig of soda, Hanna coughing away the tears of a carbonation burn.

"Slow down," Conrad warns tersely. "I'm not going anywhere."

Hanna laughs, replacing his meal to its t.v. tray. "So the good news is, you aren't gay!"

A dense silence crams itself into the spare half-second it takes Conrad's sharp ' _what_ ' to make it from his lungs to the room.

"... You aren't gay, are you?"

Conrad can only shake his head slowly, furiously, glasses slid down his nose so as not to obstruct the force of his owl-eyed glare.

"Good! Good, right?" Hanna entreats, "Because that would be bad, if you actually - if there was actually some sort of heinous magical love triangle happening here.  I mean the arrows work but it's not like - you know, no drama." His grin is self-assured, nod emphatic. "No weird, shitty rom-com-drama entanglements here, nooope.  We're good.  You just love me like a bro, you know?"

Conrad's face pinches up as he digests this latest bit of rapid-fire profundity. "I... I do?"

"Well, yeah." Hanna shrugs, palms up. "There are, what, five?  Types of love?  That one greek dude or whomever wrote about, and like, three of them weren't romantic?  Unless you totally wanna make out with me right now or something, we're probably dealing with one of those three, the familial or friend-love or patronizing kind or whatever."

"I most certainly do not want to make out with you, Hanna," Conrad agrees, pinching the bridge of his nose, glasses falling to his lap.

"Right, that's what I said. There an echo in here? _Sheesh_."

"But I do seem to have a persistent notice of you, now, up to and including unpaid freelancing lent to your operation - which makes you a case for labor exploitation, by the way."

"Dude," Hanna snorts, and Conrad never again wants to be on the receiving end of one of those _sympathetic gazes_. "It's called friendship.  It won't hurt you.  Er," a retraction; "Unless we end up in some dangerous stunts together on a dudely bro whim, in which case it might actually somewhat hurt you.  But not as badly as it might hurt, metaphysically, were you stricken in a non-bro, romantic way! Yeah!"

"Stop," Conrad grumbles, just because he'd rather grumble than smile, which he is dangerously close to doing, because, fuck, he actually _likes_  Hanna and was immensely relieved that it didn't have to be _weird_ between them. Conrad sighs through his nose, replaces his glasses, leaning forward to stand to leave, but then -

"So, okay, now for the bad news part two."

"Um." Conrad sinks back to the futon.

"The, ah," Hanna taps his fingertips together. "The arrow that hit Worth? Maybe we should do something about that before it makes things harder on Old Man Shouty?"

Conrad straightens, having nearly forgotten Worth's impairment in all this, since what was the difference, really? 'You got nice eyes, I like red' was a degree more civil than 'oy fagula, take a picture'.  "Yes, Hanna, we should.  That."

Hanna claps his hands, rubs them together briskly.  "Okay! Take it away, Barack."

The dead man lifts a heavy book from under the futon, settling it open between he and Conrad.  "There is no cure," he begins, delivering the disjointed lecture with the usual linen-closet monotone, "A cherub curse is absolute; one must simply wait until the person they love has changed enough so as to disqualify from its memory."

"'You aren't the person I married', blah blah blah," Hanna examples, pulling a knee up to rest his cheek against. "Cupid love is not the same force as human love.  It's not affection, it's not attraction, it just _is_... just a magnet appeal you gotta wait for the figurative poles to migrate away from."

"It might blind you to the flaws of your intended, or gild those flaws entirely," the zombie continues. "It is, at its heart, a force of chaos.  A randomization of fates, a curse left behind by long-dead gods, forgotten of its goals."

"Lady married the Eiffel Tower, dude, and I don't know any better example to give you," Hanna saya, gnawing his pizza with the side of his mouth he wasn't talking from. "At least one that doesn't involve animal abuse."

Conrad exhales, having flipped through a few yellowing pages of illustration and foreign, unreadable language, and appeals to the zombie's apparent authority on the matter.  "So the actual bad news, is that we have to just wait this out?"

"Nooo," Hanna warns, long and low. "No, we take care of this immediately. I need my doctor _whole_ and _sane_ , not emotionally crippled over some powerfully unrequit voodoo."

"Hold, _hold_ , hold on," Conrad puts both hands up in supplication. "I thought this was just 'dudely bromance'.  Worth isn't gay."

Hanna sucks at a molar, chewing through skepticism. "Have you _seen_ his _coat?"_

Conrad's entire face puckers. "Not recently."

The zombie suggests, "The process can be expedited with verbal rejection -"

Conrad scoffs, "Easy enough, the man's heinous and I despise everything he stands for."

Hanna, "Free healthcare?"

" - And repetitive 'othering' of the self from its past iteration," the zombie continues, unfazed by the peanut gallery. "You'll have to behave quite erratically, to misdirect the curse.  It won't be pleasant for the Doctor, but it will serve his overall health."

"Act like a different person and clearly reject all come-ons.  Well, I'm halfway done." Conrad stands.  The book is carefully folded shut.  "But as a rule, I don't like head-games.  Would be easier to just sock the guy."

Hanna chortled, nervous.  "Please don't do that."

Conrad 'tsks'.  "What, you know about the fetish, too?"

Looking as if Conrad has just farted, Hanna blinks, _hard_. "What."

"What?" Conrad mocks, handing the book down. "Now we both get to suffer that little gem of knowledge."

"I -" Hanna collapses in a slump, book balanced in his lap, armchair rocking from his silent hitching laughter. " _Buddy_. I just don't want him injured."

Conrad hums deliberation in the back of his throat, "No promises."

"ALL the promises," Hanna demands, sliding out from under the book. "He's _old_. You have to be careful with the elderly."

"He's only eight years older than me," Conrad says, helping the zombie to tidy as Hanna stacks leftover boxes into the kitchenette's fridge.

"Whaaat," Hanna argues. "No way.  How old are you?"

"Twenty eight," Conrad drawls, eyes flat. "How did you not check his background? You're the detective in this room, not me, and _I check backgrounds_. He's not legal in this country, either, so.  I'm not going to get us both thrown out for public disturbance."

"You aren't a legal migrant?" Hanna wrinkles his nose and even the zombie looks up from the dishes to watch.

"No," Conrad answers, surprised at the assumption. "I got here on a student visa.  But my bank is in England, my clients are from just about anywhere and my condo manager takes cash.  I thought you knew that?  Why I didn't go to the regular police, about Adelaide?"

"Wow," Hanna re-evaluates the art nerd in his kitchen, the blocky colors of his Tokyo street fashion and effervescent snobbery, a hard attitude hard earned from hard living maybe, and not just, you know, woefully naive dickishness. "I don't think normal police answer calls about talking bats, but okay.  Wow." Again, to Shaun/Desmond/Lucy, " _Wow_." Then, to Conrad - "Is there someone you have to hide from, Conman?  Someone back in England?"

Conrad smiles tight, slapping a tea towel free of dust to wield at the growing pile of rinsed dishes.  "Not anymore.  Which reminds me, good news part two.  Adelaide's dead."

Hanna stills, and the glance he shares with the zombie is... not celebratory.  "Who told you that?"

"Judicant Montag, actually.  Says she died earlier this week, something about he knows her Patron?  Word might not have gotten around, yet, but that's one problem sorted."

Hanna rounds the kitchen to grab Conrad by the elbow, all but stuffing him toward the bathroom, the only windowless room in the apartment, hiding them from the view of any outside interlopers.  Urgently, "When did he tell you that?"

"Ow - what -  _hey_ -" Conrad blinks the dots from his vision as the bathroom door is tugged shut, the overhead light's string tugging it to life with a clatter.  "Cripes, Hanna, you're supposed to  _reject_ this sort of thing, not instigate it.  A cupid somewhere is laughing, _maliciously."_

"Shut up," Hanna urges, gripping Conrad by the upper arms to walk him back into the tiled crevice between bath and toilet.  "And tell me what Monday said.  Word for word."

"'Shut up and talk'?"  Conrad's hands had braced up to prevent further crowding, neck and ears dusted purple.  " _Calm down_.  Who is Monday?"

"Nathaniel Montag.  Before he became Judicant, he was a P.I., like Cas."

"Cas...imiro?  You're kidding."

Hanna swipes at the pull-string, clattering the bathroom into darkness again as if this could better protect them from foes unseen, and lowers his voice.  "Adelaide isn't dead."

Conrad can smell the magic under Hanna's skin, can hear his heart beating and, dimly, can see the faint blue glow of his eyes through the complete dark.

Hanna knocks several elbows into several ceramic fixtures, stepping him and Conrad into the bathtub, as if taking shelter from an earthquake. He crouches them both down, grip tightening to Conrad's elbows, forearms, wrists.  "Classic misdirection.  You want to find a hiding criminal, you target the people they're closest to.  Tell an uninformed, isolated ally that the target is dead, or injured, or soon to be caught - and follow that schmuck directly to your target, because that's where they're going to go, to the place where they last saw their 'dead' friend.  Where..." Hanna is panting, grip around Conrad's hands, now.  "Where did you go, after Monday told you?  About Adelaide?"

"Why would you think she isn't dead?" Conrad argues hotly, reluctant to believe such a convoluted ploy.

" _Where did you go,_ " Hanna rasps, tugging urgently.

"The grocery store!" Conrad whisper-shouts, yanking his hands free.  "Then here!  I've only been at that shitty warehouse, my flat, and the clinic and besides! I! Don't! Know! Where! Adelaide! _Is_!"

"Stay! Away!" Hanna whisper-shouts back, "From! The! _Clinic!"_

 _"Why!"_  
  
_"BECAUSE YOU'RE BEING FOLLOWED, DUMBASS."_

Conrad hushes Hanna with matched urgency, well and truly panicked now that it might be true, that Nathaniel might have any arsenal of advanced vampire-tracking technology at his disposal - hell, even mortal P.I.s could get MI-6 level gadgetry to catch middling politicians in sordid affairs.  "What's that supposed to matter to Worth?  Adelaide wouldn't show back up there since the - ooooh," Conrad groans in discovery, wrapping a hand over his mouth to contain his horror.  "That hunter was following _me?"_

"Probably," Hanna allows, scuffing to a stand, knees and elbows against hollow ceramic.  "And Adelaide was using the clinic same way as any other vampire off the street - resources, housing, foodbank.  It's kind of a last-ditch hotspot for undesirables, no offense."

Doubtfully, "I've never seen another vampire there."

"Wull they could probably tell you were being followed and amscrayed!  Monday isn't the only one upset with Adelaide, Conman, she's got an  _extra_ history of offenses committed to a  _lot_ of in-groups."

"Why isn't she dead yet??"

"Because  _nobody_ wants to deal with the guy who would come a-knocking if she was ever killed.  It's all just wound-and-capture, far as I can tell, and people  _barely_ get away with wounding."

"Nepotism.  Awesome."  Conrad rubs small aggrieved circles against his temples.  "Can we get out of the bathroom, now?"

"No," Hanna grunts, stubborn.  "You are _never_ leaving this bathroom.  I will feed you blood packs from under the door, and pee in the kitchen sink, for the _rest_ of my life."

Conrad drags his hand down his face, a quip slipping through his fingers, "But where would you shit?"

"I'll get a litterbox."  Hanna chews his nail in the dark, basil and garlic and tomato on his breath.  "Stay here."

"Hanna," Conrad only means to tap Hanna, urge him out of the door so he regain his freedom, but his hand  _grabs_ and his arm  _curls_ and he's pulled Hanna back into the dark with him, instead.  "I'm - I, I think I'm the most scared I've probably ever been in my entire life, and if I stay in this bathroom I'll have to stew in that fear,"  he confesses, cold and clammy fists buried in the baggy gather of Hanna's rugby jersey.  The world spins, stops, jutters like a faulty carnival ride, racing around its star like none else in that galaxy, and only Conrad can feel the inertia.  "I need a sedative, or I'm going to chew my own arm off, maybe not even figuratively."

After a heavy pause, Hanna shifts his weight.  "Okay.  I can ask Veser to raid your medicine cabinet."

"No," Conrad all but croons, heel tapping in a frustrated fidget.  "No, Hanna, I need something for vampires, and I don't even know what that's supposed to be."  His grip flutters loose, rocking back onto a heel, side to side, a contained pacing.  "You have permission to  _beat_ me over the head, if that's the only thing that will work."

Hanna stands in place for several breaths, sniffling the type of sniffle that follows heavy eating, or argument.  "Okay," he whispers again, phone screen lighting the room with its blue glow, thumbs tapping.  "We are officially calling the actual police.  Vampire police, I mean."  He shakes off Conrad's warning grasp.  "You can't be held accountable for Adelaide's bullshit, Conrad, that just isn't fair."

"But they'll blame you for -"

"For the truth?  For doing what I did?"  Hanna reaches back to tug the door open with the gummy crack of over-painted wood leaving over-painted frame.  "Fuck, man," he croaks, normal volume despite what monsters could be listening in.  "You think her Patron doesn't _owe me_  for that?"

Caught off guard by Hanna's causal collaboration with  _evil_ , Conrad swats the first question out of the air that had drifted too close to his mental drowning-man flail, "Why do you even suppose Adelaide _isn't_ actually dead?"

"Because I saw her," Hanna mumbles, avoiding eye contact.  "Like an hour ago." 

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't look back much as a rule  
> And all this way before murder was cool  
> But your memory is here and I'd like it to stay  
> Warm light, on a winter's day
> 
> Over the ramparts you tossed  
> The scent of your skin and some foreign flowers  
> Tied to a brick, sweet as a song  
> The years have seemed short  
> But the days were long
> 
> Two loose kites fallen from the sky  
> Drawn to the ground in an end to flight
> 
> -The Shins

**X x XxX xXx X xX .** f u t u r e **. Xx X xXx XxX x X**

Luce had been woken up in a Cafe AU.

"What's the emergency?" Hanna mumbles around a mouthful of coat sleeve, face still sleep-swollen, slumped across the diner's table with a thick ceramic mug of tea curled in his arm.

Doc Worth slides into the booth seat opposite, grumbling that Ashleigh make room, and cranes forward to scan the early morning street outside - its passing cars, the litter in the wind, a pedestrian preceded by a billowing vape cloud. Hanna yawns, drops a spoon, and Worth clips his glare at the clatter. "Got a fuckin' mystery afoot, Cross, and need to hire me a detective as what's familiar with anti-vampire tacticals."

Hanna shoves his tea forward and sits up, blearily offended. "Couldn't you ask Conrad, before asking me? Aren't you two, like -"

"No," Worth gripes, and snaps his fingers to point, menacing. "We ain't, 'like' any goddamn thing.  So you can get that outta yer head right away, and find me someone as can face this situation proper. _Unbiased_ , yeah?"

"Uh," Hanna shares a glance with Ash, who then side-eyes Worth with faint concern. "So you mean, not me."

"Yep." Worth waves the server down, growls his order and tugs the furred ruff of his coat back, shouldering free while Hanna consults his memory.

"Okay," Hanna starts, dipping a thin spoon into his tea to disturb the sugar from the bottom.  "Depending on your budget, I've got at least three numbers to call.  If you're looking in the neighborhood of _free_ , well, you'd probably know better than I do who to ask.  Vampires kind of police themselves, don't they?"

"Police each other," Ashleigh corrects, reaching over to help Worth free of his coat, which seemed to have stuck around his elbows.

"Anybody we know good at," Worth tugs an arm out of his sleeve to rotate his wrist, tiny wooden spirit-hunter clicking against bone beads, "Memory stuff?  Was a vampire woke me up tonight, might have to be a vampire to find who the fuck put me to sleep."

Hanna's eyes widen and he sits a little straighter, studying the tabletop to avoid Worth's scrutiny. "Sleep? Sounds like you need a curse expert; witch, or you know.  Wow, look at the time; Ash, don't we have that thing? At that one place? To get to? Soon?"

Ashleigh only drops his gaze, thumbs departing the loose curl of his fists atop the table to tap against one another, disengaging himself from the responsibility of that conversation.

Worth only stares, slumped, probably more curious than betrayed. "You got somethin' needs saying, Hanner?"

"Whaaat," Hanna grins, eyes hard, tired. "Be real with me, Luce. Who got hurt."

Worth's whole face narrows. "T'chu mean, hurt?"

"I mean you're fine," Hanna shrugs, lacing his fingers together around his mug, eyes as bright a blue as ever behind scuffed glasses. "Everything's fine, and everyone is right where they should be, and if you don't like it, don't like anything about today or yesterday or tomorrow, well," a sad chuckle, helpless but resolved, "Nobody is going to stop you from _changing_ anything, Doc. You never give anyone that kind of power, anyway."

Hand snaking out to snatch up Hanna's forearm, Worth hauls them to a closer conference over the middle of the table, water glass skittering into Ashleigh's smooth catch.  "I will shit on your doorstep," Worth threatens, "Everyday. Every. _Day_. That you don't tell me what the fuck happened to Conrad.  I'll take a fiber, I'll take a fiber with a _beer_ , I will drink  _many beers_  to get the wettest, heartiest _shits -"_

"I don't," Hanna argues weakly, tugging ineffectually. "Fuck off, Luce, I don't know what went wrong; but he's here, isn't he? Alive? Ish? So his memory's a little - but so what!  Somebody zapped you pretty hard, like, what, a year ago, that was kinda obvious, but so?"

"What's this now about _Conrad's_ memory?" Worth hisses, yanking Hanna's tea out of his grip to slide to the dead man, sparing any spills. "Fess the fuck up, right the hell now." He shakes Hanna's arm, fingers curled in a searching grasp for his other. "I will fucking _belt_ you one, don't think I won't hit a kid -"

Hanna laughs again, cold, kicking out under the table with the squeak of wet chucks. "None of your business," he says, earning the freedom of his arms with a dull thump back against the booth.  Hanna shakes himself, rubs down an arm with a wince, lifts his sleeve to check the friction burn.  "You have to live in the now," he lectures, breath shaky. "Luce, hey, look at me." Hanna taps the table top, fumbles up a fork to scoot out of the way of the arriving food. "Answer me honest.  Who got hurt?  You're okay, aren't you?  Conrad's okay?  Life goes on?"

"Nothin's okay," Worth husks, jaw squared, shaking his head slowly, minutely.  The server takes a quick leave, the usually friendly spiel long aborted. "Maybe you ain't supposed to understand this, Cross, maybe you're fortunate to never have to.  But it ain't okay."

Despairing quietly, now - "But who got _hurt_?" Hanna shakes his head in measure, disbelieving.

Wordlessly, Ashleigh stands from the booth.

Worth watches Ash drift down the diner and out onto the wet sidewalk, then turns to his plate, appetite gone.  He picks up a fork regardless, knowing that if he doesn't eat his mood would only be that much worse.  Finally, after a few contemplative bites of egg, hash, "That's what I'm asking you."

Hanna had watched Ash take leave with all the shame of a kicked puppy, having so blithely offended against the topic of Memory Loss and what was supposed to hurt whom or why or to what severity.  "I... _iehh_ ," he deliberates, fiddling with a sticky paper napkin, bright white crumbs twisting out from between ink-stained fingertips. "Conrad got hurt, last April, on that case against Opus," he admits haltingly, quick to follow up, "But we got him back practically right away!  Honest!  And he was mostly... _fine_. Lost a few years, not unlike Ashleigh, but he knew the basics.  Turns out, the undead are _so much_ easier to resurrect than the once-living."

The fork scrapes past Worth's teeth. "And?"

"Annnd," Hanna rolls his eyes, searching the booth beside him as if it had spoken. "And I really don't think I'm allowed to tell you what else, since it's kind of personal?"

"'Personal'," Worth quotes, chin dipping in an indulgent nod, eyebrows up. Hand waving expressively, eyes wide with the affront that Hanna would even challenge his _right_ , "Me hearin' I might have the magical equivalent of _brain cancer_ is too fuckin' personal for Doctor Cross' professional fuckdamn opinion." Worth leans over his plate, eyeing the weakness in Hanna's loss of color, "You know what vampires got, in the stead of reproductive juices? 'Cos I do." Finger jabbing the table top hard enough to wobble beverages from cups, "And I know that, Hanner, from _personal_ experience with the exact bloke you're refusin' to talk to me about."

And now Hanna looks downright green with guilt. "I didn't know that," he confesses in a croak, then claims a desperate gulp of tea to try and unstick his throat.  "But it's still not my place to tell you why Conrad came back, on a summons for a _first death_ , missing twelve years of his memory.  Do you understand what I'm saying, here? That we tried, after Opus, to retrieve Conrad's soul from the open ether of his death; and that it worked." Hanna matches Worth's rigid lean, voice dropping, eyes entreating over the rims of his glasses. "I didn't get the math wrong, either, Luce. We aimed for the weakness in the veil that was Conrad's first death, an easy swap, textbook chronosurfing - the Cross-Stitch between timelines, right?  Same as me, same as Ash?  We coulda yanked him, the real him, right on back with only three years gone, looped the thread to that rooftop, no muss no fuss -"

Hanna swipes a sausage from Worth's plate, bites into it with a juicy snap, chews with all the fervor of the lecturing academic, "But _mortal_ souls anchor, remember?  Conrad's mortal soul got stuck, here, in this vampiric body. And our Conrad's immortal self? Presumably? Back where he _first_ died.  Which wasn't the rooftop!" Hanna regards the half sausage between his fingers as if it had interrupted to make a point. "Conrad first died in England," he clairifies. "At nineteen.  And his resurrection was a really simple medical one, but still, it's not my place to tell you - to tell _anyone,_ how he died.  Or why."

Worth sits back, calculating, more scientifically curious than angry, but plenty angry for having suffered such prolonged ignorance. "Y'can't cross-stitch the living," he reminds. "Coulda wound him up like Ash, or-"

"Or me," Hanna cracks, voice thick. He nibbles the sausage, doused of his excitement.  "Yeah.  But hey," he starts to twist to the side, legs looping free of the booth.  "It's all right, right?  That he's not _dead_ , dead.  Conrad.  We got him back, and he's more or less fine, give or take a decade of suffering through art school, heh." Hanna stands, hovers beside the table, awaiting Worth's acknowledgment, permission.

Finally, Worth nods, but doesn't look up from his plate.  "I suppose you tried yer best," he measures, a muscle in his jaw flickering.

Hanna waits a few beats more, and bites the inside of his cheek, and searches the diner as if for help.  Eventually, Hanna takes his leave to join Ashleigh Wong out in front of the restaurant - two walking resurrections gone wrong, having brought forth a third.

Worth waits for the door to bell Hanna's departure, then shoves his food aside to slump over the table, guts burning with the injustice of the situation.  'Younger' was a good way to describe Conrad's attitude change from the 28-year-old misanthrope who had more properly captured Worth's undying admiration (well, 31 by the time Opus showed up).  Conrad had returned younger, and probably much dumber, given how easily he'd buckled to Worth's courtship - vampiric, sure, but also missing the three years between them of bad first impressions and escalations to violence.

Come to think, Opus had died just last year, so the first and probably only violence between Worth and this proto-Connie had been vampiric exactly, and hell, downright romantic, comparably.

And sure, nineteen isn't criminal, but it was still _gross_ , and said less than flattering things about Worth's own emotional maturity, if he thought too hard about his farce of a relationship with Conrad and its one and only avenue of communication - sex and biting and nothing about, oh, personal growth or philosophical quandary or current events or dark personal histories or whatever.  Worth knew he was a dramatic old queer sometimes, that he really liked to dig elbow-deep into those emotional wounds and use just about anything as an excuse for a petty argument, an adrenaline junkie if nothing else, but -

But really only a teenager would have committed such nervous transgressions of commitment like Conrad had; like force-feeding vampiric blood to a comfortably self-destructive partner or flinging themselves into romance-with-a-capital-R whenever that partner indulged their own petty theatrics and instigation; most other people were just too busy, too short on time to waste it redefining their self-image against another person so exhaustively.

Worth can recall, with a small shudder in the pit of his stomach, what it was like to be too busy for a boyfriend, and that he currently dared not revisit the clinic for fear of seeing its state, sold or tore out or reopened to operate perfectly fine without him and his single-minded obsessions. He remembers what it was like to have an all-consuming focus quite apart from a relationship, the victories and setbacks, the measured improvements and the freedom to fail on nobody's merits but his own.

The diner doors burst open behind Hanna with a hail of cuss.

"Oy!" Worth calls, whistling sharp.

Hanna winces, turning, sheepish, and waves.

"Do you know who got me skullfucked, though?" Worth calls from behind a cupped hand, not yet paid for his meal and reluctant to depart his coat back in the booth.

"Yeah," Hanna shouts, hesitant. "I mean, I guess I was there." He jogs back to close the distance, repeating himself until Worth nods. "Conrad, the original one, I mean.  In case he died, you know, when we were following Opus?" Hanna shoves his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders.  "I've been really sorry, about this, all year. I'm still sorry, Luce. I asked him not to, if that matters?  He more or less, eh, eheh -" Hanna sniffles, rubs his nose on his sleeve. "Conrad told me to undo it if I could, like he knew that I couldn't, and not just - I mean I didn't want to do that _to you,_ even if I could have just asked Louie or whomever to give you back everything that Conrad decided it was his business to take away."

Forgiveness sands down through Worth's words, at this point, as he'd more or less deduced that Original Conrad would have been the only possible culprit in erasing memories that specifically involved _fucking Original Conrad_.  "You were right, it weren't none of your business, none of this." He matches Hanna for hunching, hands shoved into his jean pockets, easing a dull ache in an over-tired back. "This problem is between me an' the coward you tried saving on some godforsaken hill, innit. 'Cept now I need your help in getting that coward _back_ , don't I?"

Hanna nods, sighing long and slow through his nose. "That might be a while," he cautions, throwing out a lazy hand to signal his departure, forreal this time. "Our current Conrad's soul is mortal but his body's still undead, like a reverse _me_.  Who knows when next he's gonna die, or if we're even gonna be there to catch it."

"Yeah. Suppose that's true."

"I'll call you later when I wake up, we can go over my notes."

"Aye."  Worth nods to the departure with a dismissal in the cant of his chin, but when he turns back into the greasy warmth of the diner his mouth is set, grim, and his ribs are clinging one to the other, breath lost to a sorrow that had yet to detail itself clearly.

The Queen was dead; Long Live the Queen.

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ottoman couch, how handsome your furniture  
> Lovelier now, but dressed for a funeral  
> Begging you to sit for a portrait on the wall  
> To hang in the dark of some parliament'ry hall
> 
> All of the cards and all the time that it took  
> Soon it's all lines in a red leather book  
> Begging you to wait for a minute by the door  
> Your creeping feet where they've never been before
> 
> -Vampire Weekend

**X x XxX xXx X xX .**  p a s t **. Xx X xXx XxX x X**

Two days after Halloween.

Dawn approaches the city like a spilled puddle of gold; it is Conrad's fourth sunrise since his rooftop transformation, and it is the worst he's been awake to suffer, the autumn sky cloudless after a week of seasonal rain and fog.

Veser Hatch, last week's latest recruit into Hanna's ranks of amateur investigation, had taped thick black garbage bags over the apartment's windows his first day crashing on the couch, though he'd blithely insisted it was so he, himself could sleep better - having cottoned on to Conrad's extreme discomfort with acknowledging his own, er, 'condition', and owning to a third-shift, daysleeper lifestyle for himself. 

Conrad can't even begin to suggest the kid leave - the couch was free, and had hosted more than a few artists too drunk to drive after more than a few dinner parties. 

Veser isn't ever drunk but he is red-eyed and pale most nights, and shakily inhales whatever plate of leftovers Conrad sets down atop the breakfast bar for him. 

"Thanks, pal," Veser grunts over one such plate of ravioli, elbows squared over his food like he learned in juvie, to prevent theft.  He is dressed in the paper-gray scrubs of his night gig at the hospital, the job he'd taken right out of highschool with the aspiration to leave home, savings sabotaged more than once by car repair bills and generalised parental interference.  Veser presents himself like a stray dog, an easily befriended but nervous and therefore angry animal, all scowls and growls to cover the hurts, the life of hard living and routine betrayal, and no wonder.

Conrad circles out of the kitchen to slump into an armchair and squint at his covered windows, headache building, reluctant to retire to bed with a house full of guests.

Detective Cross sits on the couch beside his enigmatic partner, and miss Ipres perches on the other armchair across, hands folded in her lap, contemplative.  "Lee's still causing trouble backstage," Toni Ipres mumbles, quiet in a furtive attempt to honor Veser's grief.  "We finish our run at that venue next week, so it's not exactly our problem anymore, but someone could still get hurt."  

"No ghosts, Hanna," the dead man reminds, calmly.  "Surely you've a recommendation within the community of your trade?"

Hanna despairs quietly.  "Ehh," he haws, avoiding eye contact.  "Yyyes, buuut-"

Veser leaves the bar stool, busing his own dishes to the kitchen sink, favoring the side he'd bruised colliding with Tibenoch yester-night.

Hanna lowers his voice.  "The people I know would  _definitely_ charge you real money.  And they wouldn't treat Lee Falun's spirit very kindly, truth be told."

"It's just a shitty ghost," Veser argues, taking the arm of Conrad's chair in a perch.  "All jealousy and anger.  That's not Lee anymore, man."

"It can be," Hanna answers, subdued.  "It can be Lee Falun in whole, sometimes, if there's an anchor, a source for grounding.  Bodies are the temporary vessel, spirits are the permanent mark we'll leave on the world when we're gone."  He sits forward, eyes an electric blue.  "Which is why necromancy is the easiest magic - it's just energy mapping, right?  It's like, necromancers are the electricians of the magus; they're only so rare and so highly paid because electrical work is so dangerous, not because it's difficult."

Conrad narrows his eyes, elbowing Veser off his perch to reclaim his personal space.  "What would that make Tibenoch?"

Hanna's nose wrinkles in thought.  "Uhh, I guess Chronomancy is like the law school of the magus college.  You have to study it for a long time, there's so many types and applications of law that it's never promised you'll even be very good at any of it, and a lot of people fail the academic exams or flunk out - oh, haha!  And of those that do pass the bar, they're still restricted to obey the same laws as everyone else, unless they figure out how to, you know, 'break the law' and not 'get caught'."  Hanna shrugs.  "Rare is the lawyer who ever manages to actually change a law, and this metaphor only works if you think of the judges as like, well, _Gods."_

Veser whistles low, impressed, and shoves into the couch beside Hanna to claim a space for himself nearer Toni.  "Lemme talk to Lee's shitty ghost, see what we can do to calm his punk ass down.  I take all sorts of payments, you know."

"Like free room and board," Conrad crabs, slouching into his chair.  "This isn't your bachelor pad,  _Hatch."_

Veser's grin sharpens Conrad's way.  "Considering the _confirmed bachelor_ that owns the place, coulda fooled me, _Achenleck."_

"Whoooah," Hanna husks, eyes wide.  "Okay, on that  _totally out of line_  point, we can conclude this follow-up."  He stands, and the dead man stands with him.  Hanna folds his palms together.  "You have the case-file copies, Toni; er, Veser the police are going to need you in for a statement, not about Lee's ghost, obviously, but about our discovery of the crime scene and I guess there's an alibi claim from the, um, the accused."

Veser's scowl worsens, and he draws his knees together.

Hanna claps his hands lightly, every line of him apologetic.  "Eheh.  Yeah.  I know.  Okay!"  He steps from the living room conference.  "See you guys later, maybe!  Hopefully!"

Conrad follows, after the dead man.  "We  _will_ see you later, Mr. Cross."  He eyes back over his shoulder, at the burned runes in the middle of his living room, half obscured by a throw rug.  "Much later, if it can be helped."

"Oh man, not  _too_ much later," Hanna assures, oblivious.  "You'll need your uh, you'll - you'll need a few deliveries, right?"

Conrad's nose pinches.  "No.  I will not."

"Oh!"  Hanna brightens.  "That's good to hear!  Tell me how it goes - oh, ah, and yeah, make sure -" he digs around in the deep pockets of his oversized army jacket, producing a pamphlet.  "Make sure you don't kill anybody, and there's an address down there, where you can go to get registered for this city."

Conrad blanches, takes the pamphlet between two fingers.  "Where I can go to whatnow."

But Hanna only waves from the open door, mouth pulled back.  "Good luck!"

Roger/Dexter/Diane nods his respect, plucks his hat from the coat rack and tips it in departure.

Conrad startles as Toni passes closer.  "All right, guy," she brandishes a piece of paper between her forefingers.  "My number, in case you want to get together for a coffee sometime."

Conrad's expression puckers, and he visibly struggles to normal his face out.  "Sssurrre," he drawls, nasal, and gathers the note alongside the pamphlet, a growing harvest of irradiated litter.

"Not like _that,"_ Toni assures, bumping the door back open with her hip.  "I'm nervous that Casimiro guy might try some shit again, and it's actually sort of my family's duty to help keep the peace in this territory.  It's why we're granted the use of those talismans."  She beams, all danger and teeth, and pats the side of Conrad's terse, shrugging shoulder.  "But I'm saving your pride, so just accept the coffee date and call me if there's any trouble, okay?"

"O... kay..." Conrad says, and flinches again at Veser's loud bark of a scoff.  By the time he looks back to his door, Toni has left, closing the door after her, shutting out the risen glow of the early daylight.  "I wouldn't actually need that excuse," Conrad argues, to Veser or nobody.  He turns on heel, irritated in his aches and sleeplessness.  "And what the hell was _that_ supposed to mean, 'confirmed' bachelor?" 

**x xXx xxXXX xxX xx XXxx Xxx x**


End file.
